Page 138 - bneIntelliNews monthly country report Russia May 2024

Court in Russia rejects Google's appeal over $50 million fine related to Ukraine content. Google's legal problems with Russia preceded the full-scale war. The company was fined 7.2 billion rubles ($92.6 million) in December 2021 for failing to take down content that Russia has banned.
Russian officials target Telegram over Moscow concert hall attack .
Russian officials spent the first week after 144 people were killed in the Crocus City Hall terrorist attack looking for links to Ukraine and debating how to censor the Telegram messaging app, which has long served as a substitute for state news media in Russia. Among the ideas were proposals to block selected channels and impose criminal liability for taking part in “anti-Russian chats.” Telegram is too popular to block completely, with more daily users than VKontakte and YouTube, so Moscow is unlikely to go down that route. However, it’s clear that the authorities want to exercise greater control over the platform.
Despite the calls, the authorities clearly do not want to block Telegram completely. “We can confirm that there is currently no need to restrict Telegram’s work in Russia,” a representative of Russia’s media censor, Roskomnadzor, told Interfax. There are two reasons for this. First, Durov’s platform is much more accommodating of requests from the authorities than Meta or Discord, both of which are blocked in Russia. Since 2021, it has deleted 256,000 items at Roskomnadzor's request. Second, Telegram is just too popular — it lags only VKontakte among social media users (on some metrics), and is the largest messenger. Reinstating the ban (Russia officially blocked Telegram between 2018-2020, though it was hugely unsuccessful and the platform easily got round half-hearted attempts to restrict access inside Russia) would surely upset the platform’s huge audience in Russia.
Both Russia and Ukraine are similar in that over the past two years Telegram became far more than a simple messenger. It’s now the main platform for people on both sides to access news and find out what’s happening in the war.
Russia appears to be Telegram’s second biggest market after India. It had 84 million users in February (almost 70% of the population aged over 12). Only Yandex, Google, YouTube, WhatsApp and Vkontakte had more. In terms of average daily reach (which has doubled since Jan. 2022 to almost 60 million people), Telegram is clearly ahead of both YouTube and VKontakte. Some 20 of the 30 biggest Russian Telegram channels are dedicated to news and politics.
In Ukraine, 72% of residents regard Telegram as their main information source. Since Russia’s invasion, the number of users of the platform has grown eightfold. By the end of 2023, Telegram channels outstripped TV as the most popular information source in the country. Almost all public communication from Ukrainian government departments and politicians takes place on
138 RUSSIA Country Report May 2024 www.intellinews.com